I took off a bunch of items, still got the dist. and timing belt on there. Figure I'll wait so i can have a friend help. Can I just mark the dist and then pop it back in or just leave it on the head? Timing parts scare me lol.

2 weirds things i noticed
white residue on the valves, and
there actually was a bit of coolant in the spark plug hole once i pulled the valve cover.

You can leave it there. The only thing I can think of is if it somehow gets damaged. Hahah well.... I got a hacksaw blade, wrapped a little but of electrical tape around one end to save my hands and cut it with that. Took about 20-30 minutes to do one stay. Those bolts are really hard to get a good spanner on and you should soak them with PB blaster or similar. I managed to get all sorts of combinations of sockets and wrenches behind the engine to get the side stay off. But the one closer to the middle there really is not enough room.

Yeah I tried reaching through an opening by the passenger wheel for the bottom one but no luck. I'll give it another try tomorrow and then the hacksaw will come out. I had like 3 sockets, 2 ratches, 2 wrenches, but I couldn't get one on there that allowed any movement without bumping into something. I need to figure out exactly how I'm gonna give the timing belt tension so that I don't have to remove the bottom pulley to set the timing belt again.

You don't need to get the bottom pulley off to set timing. Getting past the two stays was by far the hardest part of the rebuild for me. I found I had ok access through the wheel well for the closest one.

no I was referring to keeping tension on the belt so that the bottom pulley didn't jump any teeth. The BGB says you have to remove the pulley to put the belt back on if you do take it off all the way. Is there a way to do it without removing that pulley?

I know if I keep tension on it, I'll be able to just put it back over the cam gears and have it marked so I get it in the right position. But if it jumps teeth, your supposed to take off the pulley to get the bottom cover off.

You could try clamping it together with a strong paper bulldog clip. Otherwise just count the notches between the cam gears and make sure the non-tensioner side is taught. I have never bothered to stop the crank jumping teeth and have never had to redo my timing after pulling the pin. You might have to ask someone else how they did it; I have never done it that way.

Oh, I'll re-upload them when I get home. Would a small zip tie fit on the tensioner like you said? If not, maybe I'll pull some fish line through it and zip tie that. The timing belt will probably be zip tied to something as well. I don't want to have to go further into taking it apart since I'm doing this at an apt. complex lol. I'm going to take the plunge tomorrow so wish me luck and post any advice as I'll probably be going online to check the BGB for details that I may have skipped since I just went in after reading over but not actually following the directions since its in the car and I don't want to take off anything I don't have to.

bluemonkey wrote:Would a small zip tie fit on the tensioner like you said?

Maybe a large one, I used string, fishing line would work well. When I did it I loosened the pulley bolt 1-2mm to fit the string around it and pulled it forwards quite hard before tying it off. Before discovering this trick it was not a lot of fun. Just make sure you torque it back up correctly if you do decide to do it that way.